The Taliban

@shavixmir said
I don’t think the West should have invaded Afghanistan at all.

But our doing so and then retreating has created a situation worse than before. Especially for the people who supported the West there (which is quite a lot, because most people actually don’t like the Taliban).

We should have gone in, axed Bin Laden, then left. Period.

@suzianne said
We should have gone in, axed Bin Laden, then left. Period.

No. You can’t just go around invading countries, because you suspect them of hiding a suspectes criminal.

@metal-brain said
How about that.
You are actually making some sense for a change.

What about Libya though? Will you see any fault in Obama for invading a country that did nothing to us?

Gaddafi's government took responsibility for the Lockbie bombing in 2003.

I wouldn't call that "nothing".

@shavixmir said
No. You can’t just go around invading countries, because you suspect them of hiding a suspectes criminal.

Did I say anything about invading? When we found out where he was, we should have dropped a Tomahawk in his lap.

That's even better than inserting a team we'd then have to extract.

@mott-the-hoople said
He handled them in siria…took about a week…or did you forget that?

Was that when the US turned tail and abandoned the Kurds to their fate? Oh no actually that was Syria not Siria.
Exactly when did Trump handle anything in Syria other than handing the region over to Putin.

@metal-brain said
The USA armed them in the 80s to fight the Russians. They used to be allies until we betrayed them. They are making gains fast because the Afghan people mostly like them and hate Americans for invading and occupying their country.

If some other nation invaded and occupied your country would you like them? Of course not.

No most people do not like the Taliban at all on account of all the executions n stuff.
Your right they pretty much hate the US for bombing the crap out of them for 20 years but it’s not an either or thing they can hate both of them at the same time.
I guess you’d be ok with having to wear a beard and taking your daughter out of school because some religious fascist said so.

@suzianne said
Did I say anything about invading? When we found out where he was, we should have dropped a Tomahawk in his lap.

That's even better than inserting a team we'd then have to extract.

Same with Iraq I never understood why we didn’t just decapitate the regime and leave the human and materiel infrastructure in place rather than invading the whole country back into the Stone Age.

@suzianne said
Did I say anything about invading? When we found out where he was, we should have dropped a Tomahawk in his lap.

That's even better than inserting a team we'd then have to extract.

No, you can’t just drop bombs on a soverign nation, just because you suspect there’s a suspected criminal there.

@kevcvs57 said
Same with Iraq I never understood why we didn’t just decapitate the regime and leave the human and materiel infrastructure in place rather than invading the whole country back into the Stone Age.

Because it is not allowed. It’s morally corrupt. It will only come back to bite you on the arse.

@shavixmir said
Because it is not allowed. It’s morally corrupt. It will only come back to bite you on the arse.

The strong tend to have the final say on what is and isn’t allowed. But my point was that a regime decapitation would have been a lot less wrong than a full blown invasion and destruction of the wider civil order. Which actually led to the insurgency and the rise of ISIS.
When the powerful just kill each other and leave us out of it the world will be a much safer and nicer place.

@shavixmir said
No, you can’t just drop bombs on a soverign nation, just because you suspect there’s a suspected criminal there.

I’m sorry but if a sovereign state harbours and supports a military force that flies planes into your downtown district killing thousands of civilians you can assume that you are at war with that sovereign state and you can definitely bomb it.
Targeting the Taliban hierarchy and Osama Bin Laden would have been morally justified and saved a shed load of US and Afghan lives. Full blown invasion and the high civilian death toll that goes with it is almost never justified.

@kevcvs57 said
Same with Iraq I never understood why we didn’t just decapitate the regime and leave the human and materiel infrastructure in place rather than invading the whole country back into the Stone Age.

It took 9 years to find Osama, 9 months to find Saddam, and Mohammad Omar, the head of the Taliban, was never found and died in 2013. This was after full scale invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Outside of its obvious criminality in international law, "decapitating" a leadership that doesn't want to be "decapitated" isn't easy. And even if successful, hardly solves the problem - these are large hierarchical organizations with equally rabid underlings ready to fill any vacancies.

@kevcvs57 said
The strong tend to have the final say on what is and isn’t allowed. But my point was that a regime decapitation would have been a lot less wrong than a full blown invasion and destruction of the wider civil order. Which actually led to the insurgency and the rise of ISIS.
When the powerful just kill each other and leave us out of it the world will be a much safer and nicer place.

Certain people are in power in a country for a reason. Murdering them doesn't change those reasons.

@suzianne said
Gaddafi's government took responsibility for the Lockbie bombing in 2003.

I wouldn't call that "nothing".

Stop it, the West didn't overthrow Gaddafi for Lockerbie. The bombing campaign was 8 years after Libya had reached agreement with the US and UK to pay compensation for that 1988 atrocity.

@kevcvs57 said
I’m sorry but if a sovereign state harbours and supports a military force that flies planes into your downtown district killing thousands of civilians you can assume that you are at war with that sovereign state and you can definitely bomb it.
Targeting the Taliban hierarchy and Osama Bin Laden would have been morally justified and saved a shed load of US and Afghan lives. Full blown invasion and the high civilian death toll that goes with it is almost never justified.

You can’t twist history to fit the narrative you prefer.

Osama and his cronies were Saudi-Arabian.
He was killed in Pakistan.
The US called him a terrorist. That’s a criminal. That means you have the law. National and international; treaties etc.
It also means he’s innocent until proven otherwise in a court of law.

Normal countries don’t go to war over a suspected criminal.

The Taliban had nothing to do with 9-11.
They just refused to hand over Bin Laden.
Was there an extradition treaty between the Taliban and the US?
Did the US prove to the Taliban that the man was guilty?

All this adds up to very dodgy grounds for attacking Afghanistan.
And I literally hate the Taliban.